The industry withstood the sharp fluctuations of the stock market at the beginning of the year and dire predictions that the current boom cycle was coming to an end. That didn’t happen.

Instead, tech persevered, even as the money tightened. Tech startups received $5.8 billion through the third quarter, which puts venture spending on track to fall far short of last year’s haul of $11 billion. It was a year that saw no blockbuster public offerings, the tech industry’s coming-of-age party that usually spurs big rounds of investment, growth and excitement.

Without the usual bullish proclamations of endless growth, reality set in. Companies began to grab pieces off the chessboard or look for exits. Verizon bought Yahoo. Microsoft bought LinkedIn. Twitter tried, and failed, to sell itself.

“The year wasn’t marked by a downturn in any way,” said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “We just continued. We did it incrementally.”

Indeed, tech superstars thrived amid global challenges, even as the honeymoon period seemed to be over.

Facebook wrestled with big issues such as how to handle censorship on its platform and its role as a news site during the presidential election.

Apple, with no new hit category, appeared less like the innovation powerhouse it has long been. For the first time in 15 years, the iPhone maker reported a drop in annual sales in 2016. Yet the company, which celebrated its 40th birthday, survived a standoff with the FBI over whether to unlock the iPhone used by a terrorist attacker. And it remains the most valuable company in the world.

Even Alphabet, Google’s parent company, stumbled with some of its so-called “moonshots” — those explorations that the company’s chief financial officer calls “other bets.” The company scrapped Google Fiber, its nationwide effort to expand high-speed connectivity; jettisoned Project Ara, its modular phone; and reorganized Nest, its smart home unit.

Perhaps most bracingly, Silicon Valley was mostly ignored in the presidential race with both candidates failing to engage in its issues or spend much time here. After largely aligning themselves with Hillary Clinton, tech leaders watched agog as Donald Trump won decidedly.

For Silicon Valley, 2016 won’t be remembered as a blockbuster, but the region hasn’t forgotten its role as the engine of innovation. It may simply be taking a moment to catch its collective breath before coming up with the next new thing.

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QUOTE: It is the comparative quiet before the next innovation storm. Everyone is still trying to innovate. Their innovation is focused on hanging on to what they got rather than forging into unexplored white space. But we can sort of see the shape of what’s next. It’s robotics, deep learning and artificial intelligence.

— Paul Saffo, longtime Silicon Valley observer

TIMELINE:

January: Tech stocks sink, with the Nasdaq falling 500 points in a single day.

February-March: Apple fights the FBI’s effort to force it to unlock an iPhone that was used by a terrorist attacker in San Bernardino.

May: Mark Zuckerberg meets with Glenn Beck and other conservative media personalities to talk about bias on the social network.

May: A man driving a Tesla with self-driving technology crashes and dies.

June: Microsoft buys LinkedIn.

July: Verizon says it will buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion.

July: U.S. regulators sanction Theranos, the Palo Alto medical testing company, and ban Elizabeth Holmes, the firm’s founder and CEO, from operating the company’s lab for two years.

August: A federal judge rejects Uber’s deal with drivers who sued the world’s most valuable startup, arguing that they should be considered employees.

August: Five tech companies — Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook — become for a brief period the most valuable companies in the world.